For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the
risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as Commanding Officer of the U.S.S.
Harder (SS-257) during her 5th War Patrol in Japanese-controlled waters. Floodlighted by a
bright moon and disclosed to an enemy destroyer escort which bore down with intent to
attack, CDR Dealey quickly dived to periscope depth and waited for the pursuer to close
range, then opened fire, sending the target and all aboard down in flames with his third
torpedo. Plunging deep to avoid fierce depth charges, he again surfaced and, within 9
minutes after sighting another destroyer, had sent the enemy down tail first with a hit
directly amidship. Evading detection, he penetrated the confined waters off Tawi Tawi with
the Japanese Fleet base 6 miles away and scored death blows on 2 patrolling destroyers in
quick succession. With his ship heeled over by concussion from the first exploding target
and the second vessel nose-diving in a blinding detonation, he cleared the area at high
speed. Sighted by a large hostile fleet force on the following day, he swung his bow
toward the lead destroyer for another "down-the-throat" shot, fired 3 bow tubes
and promptly crash-dived to be terrifically rocked seconds later by the exploding ship as
the Harder passed beneath. This remarkable record of 5 vital Japanese destroyers sunk in 5
short-range torpedo attacks attests the valiant fighting spirit of CDR Dealey and his
indomitable command.

CDR Samuel David Dealey,Medal Of Honor Recipient

Submarine Hero -
Samuel David Dealey

by Edward C. Whitman

Of the seven submariners granted the Medal of Honor in World
War II, three received the award posthumously. And among those, the one who sank the most
Japanese tonnage before being lost in action was Sam Dealey. His quiet heroism - attested
by a Silver Star and a Navy Cross with three gold stars - in addition to his Medal of
Honor - remains an inspiration to the Submarine Force nearly sixty years later.

Samuel David Dealey was born in Dallas in 1906 of a prominent
Texas family. His uncle was a founder and publisher of the Dallas Morning News, and Dealey
was appointed to the Naval Academy from his home state. After "bilging out" for
low grades, he won reinstatement and eventually graduated with the class of 1930. After
Submarine School and a relatively undistinguished series of peacetime assignments, he was
given command of the non-combatant submarine, S-20, used to support at-sea experiments off
New London. However, when war broke out, his practical qualifications led to assignment as
Commanding Officer of the new-construction Gato-class submarine USS Harder (SS-257), which
he commissioned on 2 December 1942, not quite a year after Pearl Harbor. After a shakedown
off the East Coast, Dealey survived a "blue-on-blue" attack by a Navy patrol
bomber in the Caribbean to bring Harder to the Pacific in the spring of 1943.

Harder left Pearl Harbor on her first war patrol on 7 June,
bound for the coast of southern Honshu. In his first attack
on a two-ship convoy late on the night of 21 June, Dealey was driven deep by an aggressive
escort and crashed into the muddy bottom - an inauspicious beginning, even though it now
appears that one target may have been damaged. Dealey backed himself out of the mud, and
two nights later had his first real success in torpedoing the ex-seaplane tender Sagara
Maru (7,000 tons) and crippling her so badly that she was beached on the Japanese mainland
and abandoned as a total loss. Over the next four days, Dealey made seven attacks on three
different convoys, but post-war analysis credits him only with possible damage to one
ship.

Harder returned to Midway on 7 July with one of her four
diesel engines completely broken down. She was one of 12 Gato-class boats fitted
originally with the troublesome Hooven-Owens-Rentschler (HOR) engines, whose original
design was licensed from the German firm MAN (Maschinenfabrik-Augsburg-N�rnberg) in the
1930s. After some hasty repairs and bearing a generous inventory of spare engine parts,
Harder returned to sea for her second war patrol off Honshu in late August and in 14 days
made nine attacks, which netted Harder a total of five ships for 15,000 tons in the
post-war accounting. Once again, the ship suffered engine problems throughout the patrol
but returned safely to Pearl Harbor, via Midway, on 7 October 1943.

At the end of that month, COMSUBPAC, VADM Charles Lockwood,
sent Harder, USS Snook (SS-279), and USS Pargo (SS-264) to the Marianas as a wolfpack to
attack Japanese shipping in preparation for the invasion of Tarawa (20 November). At that
stage of the war, "coordinated operations" among submarines were still hampered
by poor communications. Thus, after collaborating with Pargo in attacking a freighter on
the 12th - with results never clearly established - and sinking a small minesweeper with
gunfire that night, Dealey was soon separated from the rest and operating independently.
On 19 November, he picked up a convoy of three large freighters with accompanying escorts
north of the Marianas and positioned for an attack, altogether firing ten torpedoes in his
first attempt, scoring hits on two of his targets. Driven down by the escorts, he surfaced
later that night to chase the freighter that had managed to escape undamaged. Eventually
firing 11 more torpedoes at the fugitive for two hits and four circular runs - and then
driven off by defensive gunfire from the tenacious Japanese crew - Dealey broke off the
engagement and returned to Pearl Harbor for lack of torpedoes. Later, it was established
that all three ships had sunk, the third - Nikko Maru - late that night, giving Dealey and
Harder a total bag of 4 ships and over 15,000 tons for their third war patrol. Once again,
however, one of Harder's HOR engines had failed completely, and the other three were only
kept alive by cannibalizing spare parts from the fourth. Thus, shortly after she arrived
in Hawaii on 30 November, Harder was sent back to Mare Island to be completely re-engined
with General Motors diesels. Dealey brought Harder back to Pearl Harbor in late February
1944 and took herout for her fourth war patrol on 16 March, accompanied by USS Seahorse
(SS-304). Initially assigned lifeguard duty for downed U.S. aviators in the western
Caroline Islands, Harder was vectored on 1 April to rescue an injured pilot on a small
enemy-held island just west of Woleai, which had been hit that day by an American carrier
strike. Under an umbrella of friendly air cover, Dealey nosed Harder toward the beach
until he could ground the bow up against the encircling reef and hold it there by working
both screws. Then, in the face of Japanese sniper fire only partially suppressed by the
circling aircraft, a rubber boat was sent in to retrieve the flier, ENS John Galvin, who
was brought to safety in what soon became a legendary rescue.

Continuing his war patrol, Dealey next scored his first of
four successes against the toughest target of all - a Japanese destroyer. Spotted by an
enemy aircraft north of the Western Carolines on 13 April, Harder became the quarry of a
patrolling enemy destroyer IJS Ikazuchi, which closed to within 900 yards before Dealey
fired a spread of torpedoes that sank his attacker within five minutes. His ensuing
contact report quickly became famous: "Expended four torpedoes and one Jap
destroyer." Four days later, Dealey also sank the 7,000 ton Matsue Maru near Woleai -
and then surfaced again near the island on 20 April to bombard the beleaguered Japanese
garrison with his 4-inch deck gun. Harder ended her fourth war patrol at Fremantle,
Australia, on 3 May 1944.

Next, Dealey was ordered to take Harder on patrol off the
Japanese fleet anchorage at Tawi Tawi in the southwestern tip of the Philippines, and he
left Fremantle on 26 May. Asked to pick up some friendly guerrilla fighters from nearby
northeastern Borneo, Dealey headed into the Sibutu Passage on the night of 6 June and came
upon a convoy of three empty tankers and two destroyers, one of which detected him and
initiated a pursuit. Again, Dealey let the enemy close to within 1,100 yards before firing
three torpedoes, and IJS Minatsuki became his second destroyer victim. Then, although
thwarted in both an attack on the second destroyer and his attempt to re-attack the
convoy, Dealey came across the destroyer Hayanami the next morning south of Tawi Tawi,
attacked with three torpedoes, and toted up another one. Following this encounter, Harder
transited the Sibutu Passage to pick up the guerrilla force on the night of 8 June, and
headed back early the next day.

In the narrowest part of the Passage, Dealey spotted what appeared to
be two more patrolling Japanese destroyers and made an undetected approach. Firing four
torpedoes at the overlapping targets, he was rewarded with two hits on the IJS Tanikaze,
which sank almost immediately. Dealey thought he had scored a hit and sunk another
destroyer also, but post-war records failed to confirm that there was a second one
present. On 10 June, Harder sighted a large Japanese task force that included three
battleships, four cruisers, and their screening destroyers, but she was spotted by an
enemy airplane, and one of the escorts pressed an attack. Dealey sent three torpedoes
"down the throat," heard several explosions, and thought he had scored another
kill before diving to avoid two hours of relentless depth-charging, but Japanese records
later showed that the enemy was able to avoid his torpedoes. Dealey returned to Darwin on
21 June after an outstanding patrol that firmly established his reputation as the
"Destroyer Killer," with what was then thought to be a total of six to his
credit. (It was really four.) Of greater strategic importance was the ensuing decision by
Japanese Admiral Soemu Toyoda to abandon the Tawi Tawi anchorage as too exposed to enemy
submarines, a sortie that then precipitated the Battle of the Philippine Sea.

In a curious incident that still raises eyebrows today, RADM
Ralph Christie, who commanded US submarines at Fremantle, ordered Harder back to sea on
the day she arrived, ostensibly to seek out and attack a Japanese cargo ship that carried
nickel ore from Celebes to the homeland once a month - but also to give Christie an
opportunity to participate personally in a short war patrol. Assigned on 27 June to
intercept a damaged Japanese cruiser returning from the Battle of the Philippine Sea,
Dealey was unable to close for an attack and was similarly outmaneuvered by the
"nickel ship" three days later, when Japanese patrol aircraft forced him down
and kept him there. Harder, Christie, and Dealey returned to Darwin without further
incident on 3 July, and the whole episode was treated simply as an extension of the ship's
fifth patrol.

During their time together, however, RADM Christie took
Dealey aside and noted his opinion that after five successful war patrols, it was time for
Dealey to relinquish command of Harder to his Executive Officer and move on to another
job. Dealey demurred. With about a third of Harder's crew about to be replaced, he felt a
personal responsibility to break in the new men before turning the boat over to a
fledgling Commanding Officer. Ultimately, Christie agreed that Dealey could take Harder
out for one more patrol, her sixth.

Accordingly, after a two-week rest in RADM Christie's
quarters, Dealey left Fremantle on 5 August 1944 commanding a three-boat wolfpack, in
which Harder was joined by USS Haddo (SS-255) and USS Hake (SS-256). Their objective was
the destruction of Japanese shipping off the west coast of the Philippines, south of the
Luzon Strait. Hearing that a lucrative Japanese convoy was holed up in Paluan Bay in
northern Mindoro, Harder and Haddo joined three other submarines lying in wait, all under
Dealey's command. When the convoy came out early on the morning of 21 August, the
resulting m�l�e - punctuated by intense depth charge barrages by the Japanese - left
four enemy merchants totalling 22,000 tons on the bottom, with all five U.S. boats
unscathed. Of the four victims, two were attributed to Haddo, commanded by Chester Nimitz,
Jr., son of Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, while Dealey - unusually - failed to score.

Dealey and Nimitz then moved northward to Manila Bay,
arriving that same evening, and shortly after midnight picked up three small targets on
radar. These were three 900-ton frigates, late of the convoy that had been so badly
manhandled off Paluan Bay. Haddo and Harder coordinated their attack and by dawn had sunk
all three, with subsequent analysis crediting Harder with IJS Sado and giving both
submarines a share of IJS Matsuwa and IJS Hiburi. The two boats then moved northward along
Luzon to rendezvous with Hake, but on the morning of 23 August, Nimitz expended his last
torpedoes in sinking the destroyer Asakaze, which had been escorting a Japanese tanker,
and departed for his advance base at Mios Woendi to replenish. Believing that Asakaze had
only been crippled and towed into Dasol Bay south of Lingayan, Harder and Hake lay in wait
outside.

On the morning of 24 August, two ships emerged from Dasol Bay - a
minesweeper and the old Thai destroyer Phra Ruang. Hake maneuvered to attack the
destroyer, but broke off when it turned back into the bay. Meanwhile, the Japanese
minesweeper continued out, pinging continually, and Hake moved off to evade, as her
Commanding Officer, Frank Haylor, caught a last glimpse of Harder's periscope at 0647. At
0728, Haylor heard a string of 15 depth charge explosions in the distance; then nothing.

Remaining in the area all day, Haylor brought Hake to the
surface that night and tried to contact Harder, with no success. Over the next two weeks,
Haylor continued his search, but no sign of Dealey and Harder ever materialized, and it
became apparent that the enemy minesweeper had been successful on 24 August in ending
their extraordinary run. Indeed, after the war, Japanese records showed that an
antisubmarine attack that morning off Caiman Point had resulted in oil, wood chips, and
cork floating in the vicinity. Dealey's death and the loss of the remarkable fighting team
he had created in Harder produced waves of shock and grief that engulfed the entire
Submarine Force. In the final analysis, Sam Dealey and Harder had sunk 18 enemy ships,
with total tonnage in excess of 55,000 - enough to put him among the top five US submarine
skippers in World War II. He and his men would be sorely missed.

Perhaps smarting from his decision to allow Dealey to
undertake a sixth war patrol at a time when several colleagues thought he was tired and
overly fatigued, RADM Christie nominated Dealey for a posthumous Medal of Honor
immediately after the loss was reported. Sad to tell, this action became mired in a
controversy that stemmed from an earlier decision by General MacArthur to award the Army
Distinguished Service Cross to Dealey for his prior accomplishments in the theater. This
had been opposed at the time by VADM Thomas Kinkaid, COMSEV ENTHFLT and MacArthur's naval
commander, and he disapproved Dealey for the Medal of Honor on the grounds that he had
already been honored adequately. This dispute was one of several that led to growing
personal animosity between Admirals Christie and Kinkaid, culminating eventually in
Kinkaid's relieving Christie in December 1944. Only when Christie left Kinkaid's command
and returned to Washington was he able to push his case for Dealey's Medal of Honor - with
General MacArthur's support - and it was awarded posthumously to Dealey's wife, Edwina, in
1945.

Finally, in 1953, the Navy named the USS Dealey (DE-1006),
first of a class of new, post-war destroyer escorts, in Sam Dealey's honor, perhaps an
ironic choice in view of his wartime renown as the "Destroyer Killer." In
another striking connection, an even more prominent World War II naval hero - and later
President of these United States - met his own death in 1963 on Dealey Plaza in Dallas,
named after Sam Dealey's uncle.